Officer left work to drink, altered timecard

Records: Lieutenant suspended 90 days but retained his job

Plagued by personal issues and dejected over a news article that chronicled his recent work suspension, a Chicago Heights police lieutenant left his post mid-shift last December to drink at a bar in Indiana and changed his time sheet to indicate he’d taken the day off, an internal police investigation found.

Lt. Keith Applequist, 48, signed in as “watch commander,” or shift supervisor, for an evening shift Dec. 15, 2017, but left the station a few hours later, without notifying his superiors, to drink at a bar in Dyer, Ind., the investigative report stated. He returned to the station later that evening to remove his signature from the sign-in sheet and instructed the on- duty sergeant to sign on the watch commander’s line, according to the report.

Applequist, who had returned to work only recently following a 20-day suspension for instigating a bar fight, received a 90-day

suspension for the on-duty drinking incident but retained his job, according to records obtained by the Daily Southtown in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The 18-year veteran, who could not be reached for comment, returned to work Sept. 6, nearly nine months after the incident, upon being found “fit for duty” by a clinical psychologist, records showed.

In May, the same psychologist found Applequist unfit for duty, stating in a report that he was at “a high risk level for integrity issues, alcohol and substance use, and anger management,” and concluding that she thought he’d be unable to “sufficiently and safely meet the expectations and fulfill the duties of being a CHPD Lieutenant,” according to a department memo.

Later, the psychologist found Applequist had met the three recommendations he needed to fulfill to return to the job, according to a Sept. 4 memo from police Chief Thomas Rogers.

Rogers did not respond to a request for comment about his decision to reinstate Applequist orwhat three conditions the lieutenant had met since being found unfit for duty in May.

T.J. Somer, the city’s corporation counsel, said city officials took Applequist’s situation seriously but could not answer specific questions related to personnel issues.

“As the documents you have received make clear, we have scrupulously followed all of the rules and procedures that the Department has instituted to assure public safety while respecting our employees’ rights to due process,” he said in an email.

A “last-chance agreement” Applequist signed in April allows the department to terminate him for cause if he commits any future act of misconduct and precludes him from challenging his termination in such a scenario. The agreement also stipulated that, upon his return, Apple quist would be stripped of his watch commander duties pending reassignment.

Thecity did not respond to a question about Apple quist’s reassignment, but time sheets since his return indicate he’s been moved from patrol to lockup and has ceded watch commander duties to another officer.

In memos Applequist sent the chief shortly after the incident and in a transcript fromthe formal interrogation he received in March as part of the department’s internal probe, the lieutenant did not acknowledge that he’d violated department policy. Rather, he said he believed he was off work on the day of the incident and therefore did not think he’d violated any policies by drinking at the bar.

When asked to explain why he’d come to work that day, signed in as watch commander and spent three hours at the station before leaving on his day off, Apple qu is ts aid he’ d planned to work that day so he could take off on a later date, but ended up being unable to complete his shift for personal reasons.

He said myriad family issues and the publication that day of a Daily Southtown news article about his recent 20-day suspension prevented him from concentrating at work, so he left for the bar without telling his superior and considered it a day off, according to records.

“I wasn’t feeling good, and, you know, I just couldn’t focus on being here,” he told investigators. “And I didn’t want to putmyself or anyone else in jeopardy by not having, you know, my ‘A’ game.”

Applequist explained that he did not tell his commander he’d left work during his shift and planned to “reinstate” his normal day off because he believed they had a tacit understanding.

“I thought we had an understanding that if I was not going to stay, that Iwould just take my day off, you know,” he said, according to a transcript of his interrogation.

“My intent was to try to work the full day, you know,” he added later. “And not feeling well and stuff like that, I didn’t think it was right to take a sick day on a standard day off. I thought the right thing to do would just (be to) reinstate my day off.”

Apple quist told investigators he returned to the station later that night to alter the sign-in sheet to indicate he’d taken the day off because he wanted to “reflect what was correct and accurate.”

When the investigator asked him if he’d done something like that before— left in the middle of a shift and come back later to change the schedule — Applequist said he had, according to the transcript. When pressed on it, he said he couldn’t remember, the transcript shows. At that point, the interrogator dropped the issue and did not revisit it.

The investigator wrote in his summary of the interrogation that Applequist “continued to assert that he thought his day off switch was approved orally, and he did not feel that he violated CHPD Policy by leaving his shift without notifying his superior and going to a tavern.”

But the last-chance agreement that Applequist signed the following month indicates he concurred with the chief’s findings regarding his violation of numerous department policies.

Going forward, Applequist, who documents show spent nearly 40 days in an inpatient substance abuse treatment facility in Florida earlier this year, must submit to random alcohol testing and attend weekly therapy sessions and regularly scheduled meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous or NO Cop Outs, per the recommendation of the psychologist who cleared him for duty.